Taps
by Alchemine
Summary: An unpleasant memory of Baxter's time in prison comes back to haunt her, but Mr Molesley may have the answer. Set sometime between series 4 and 5.


_So I watched Downton Abbey for the first time (years late, I know) and wanted to write something about two of my fav. characters. This is set not too long after Baxter's first appearance._

Phyllis Baxter's attic room is small and bare, with whitewashed walls and plain furnishings, but after three years in a cell, she thinks it as beautiful as any of the grand chambers belonging to the family. A life in service has trained her to expect few personal possessions and little privacy, but nothing could have prepared her for the endless humiliations and indignities of prison. Bathing and dressing without anyone watching, sleeping safely behind a solid door to which only she and Mrs Hughes have the key—these things are luxuries she will never take lightly again.

So, too, is the deep, dark quiet of the country nights. She had never liked the clatter and rumble of London traffic when she worked there, but that sound had been nothing compared to the prison after lights-out, when the air had filled with the wailing of women: the plump, pretty girl, only sixteen, who'd been caught thieving and cried because she was homesick; the fair woman who'd smothered her newborn in a fit of despair and woke up in the small hours shrieking that the baby's ghost was floating over her cot; the toothless old hag in the next cell, who had seemed calm and reasonable during the day, but mad enough for Bedlam once the sun set; and all the rest shouting at them to shut up and go to sleep, for Christ's sake.

Phyllis had done her share of weeping too, but she'd learnt to do it silently, with the rough prison blanket covering her face, so as not to add to the noise. During her first week at Downton, she'd lain rigid on her narrow mattress every night, waiting for someone to start screaming, until the silence had finally lulled her into relaxing. Now she thinks of her room as a sanctuary, not one that belongs to her, but one that will protect her for as long as she is within.

That's why, when the tap on her wall comes while she is readying herself for bed, it shocks her so badly.

She stops with one arm upraised, a wet flannel dripping in her free hand. There is a proper modern bathroom at each end of the servants' corridor, but the women's is so often occupied that she, like most of the staff, resorts to the old-fashioned jug and basin of her childhood on some nights. The jug sits steaming gently in the warm yellow light of her bedside lamp while she waits, eyes wide and ears pricked, to see if she has imagined the sound. Perhaps, she thinks, it was only a mouse. Lord knows there are enough of them scurrying about the house, despite all the maids' efforts.

After a moment, when nothing happens, she wrings the cloth out, folds it and drapes it over the edge of the basin, then dries herself briskly with a fresh white towel, trying to chase away the gooseflesh that has sprung up on her arms and chest at that soft tapping noise. She is doing up the button at the neck of her nightdress when she hears it again, not a single tap, but a short series of them: _tap_ , pause, _tap_ , pause, _tap_ , pause, _tap-tap_.

"Oh," she says aloud in a small, strangled voice, and sits down hard in the straight chair beside the washstand.

She has heard taps like those before, on the iron bars of cells and the pipes in the prison laundry. They are a code that inmates use, the ones who have been in and out of prison for half their lives and have built up their own culture around it. She has never learnt to decipher the code, not wanting to be drawn too deeply into that world, but she knows what it is. Only…who else in this house would both understand it and have reason to use it? Is someone trying to frighten her? Of the few people who know of her past, only Thomas has that sort of wicked streak, and Thomas prefers to do his frightening in person, as she knows all too well.

 _Tap_ , pause, _tap-tap-tap_ , pause, _tap_ , pause, _tap-tap-tap-tap_.

It's coming from the wall just to the right of her bed, at about the height where her head would be if she were sitting up to read. Gathering her courage, Phyllis gets up and advances across the creaking floorboards toward it, one hand outstretched as if to touch the plaster, but before her shaking fingers make contact, another set of taps comes— _tap_ , pause, _tap-tap-tap-tap_ , pause, _tap-tap_ , pause, _tap_ —and she pulls back with a little gasp.

"Stop it," she whispers. "Please, please stop."

She doesn't expect it to work, but somehow whoever or whatever is on the other side of the wall seems to receive her request, and the tapping falls silent. She stands there waiting for a full five minutes, until her breathing slows and the trembling in her hands quiets, but still she can't quite summon the nerve to get into bed in case it should start again. Eventually she wraps herself in her dressing gown and retreats to the chair, where she sits until the dark square of the slanted attic window begins to turn grey with dawn, and she must begin her work.

All day she feels fragile and dazed with the lack of sleep, going through the familiar motions of dressing and brushing, folding and laying away by rote. After Lady Grantham has retired for the night, as Phyllis is tidying the dressing table and making her usual light bedtime conversation, she has the disorienting sensation that she is standing on one side of a chasm and the countess on the other, with their voices floating to each other across the void. From that vast distance, Lady Grantham opines that she looks tired and should have an early night, and Phyllis agrees, bids her mistress rest well, and is out of the room before Lord Grantham has even made his appearance.

She climbs the stairs to the attic with some apprehension, but when she finally gains the safety of her room, the sight of her bed, still smooth and unused, brings on such a wave of weariness that she undresses and falls into it without even cleaning her teeth. The sheets smell of lavender sachet and the early autumn sunshine they were dried in, and her eyes are already closing, closing—

 _Tap_ , pause, _tap-tap-tap_ , pause, _tap_ , pause, _tap-tap-tap-tap_.

It's in the same place, just above the bed and to the right, and it brings Phyllis up and out of her doze with a violent jerk. She sits up gasping, expecting to see cell bars and hear the fair woman screaming _my baby, my baby_ , but it's her own room, quiet except for the tapping that has changed to a new pattern: _tap-tap_ , pause, _tap_ , pause, _tap-tap_ , pause, _tap-tap_.

For a moment she thinks she may go mad and pound on the wall with her fists, to make it stop or just to drown it out, but she pulls herself together and scrambles out of bed instead, dragging the quilt and pillow with her. Without bothering to put on slippers or dressing gown, she goes to the door, opens it a crack, checks in both directions for anyone who might be coming, and then she slips across the corridor and turns the knob on the unoccupied room there. It's a double room, the sort that two housemaids would have shared when Downton had a full staff, and the beds are stripped down to their blue-striped ticking. She curls up on the nearest one and pulls her quilt over her head, and cries with the silent tears that are the only ones she can shed now, until at last she falls asleep.

The next evening she sits up late in the servants' hall, working her way through her mending to put off the moment when she must go up. She cannot sleep in the empty room every night-this morning she nearly missed her wake-up call by not being where she was meant to be—and if she asks to move permanently, Mrs Hughes will want to know why. She bends close over her work, stitching tiny pearl buttons onto the cuffs of one of Lady Grantham's blouses, while her thoughts go round and round, wondering what she can do.

"Are you all right, Miss Baxter?" Mr Molesley has been glancing sidelong at her over his book, and now he closes it, with one finger tucked between the pages to keep his place. "Only you've been awfully quiet all evening. I hope you haven't had bad news."

"No, nothing like that." He looks so worried that she musters up a smile for him, and he returns it a bit hesitantly. He has nice eyes, dark blue, with fine lines around them that crinkle into spider webs when he smiles. Not that she has any business noticing footmen's eyes, she thinks, and sighs to herself.

"Just a bit tired," she says, as Mr Molesley is still waiting for an answer. "I haven't slept very well for the last few nights. It must be the change of seasons."

"Ah, it could be that." His smile widens. "I've been keeping late hours myself. I got a new book when I went into York a few days ago, and it's fascinating."

"Oh?" Phyllis says politely, re-threading her needle.

"Yes, very. It's all about spies and secret codes."

Phyllis misses the stitch she is about to take, stabs her finger hard with the needle, and sucks in a sharp hiss of pain that startles Mr Molesley.

"Are you hurt? Let me see…"

"It's only a pinprick." She sets her work aside quickly, for fear of spotting Lady Grantham's fine lace with her blood, and fishes a handkerchief out of her pocket to wrap around the injury. "What was that you said—secret codes?"

"Oh—yes—lots of different ones, with substituted letters and numbers and symbols. You can even use lemon juice instead of ink to be extra safe, and then the person you're writing to can only read what you've written by holding it over a candle flame." Mr Molesley is warming to his subject, words tumbling out without a hint of a stutter. "People have used them to pass messages in wars, they say."

"I see," Phyllis says. She inspects her pricked finger, sees it's still oozing a bit, and replaces the handkerchief. "I wonder—would there happen to be a code in the book that uses taps on the wall?"

"Yes!" He opens the book, flips through it and then spreads it out flat, one hand holding it open, to show her a page with a printed grid of letters and numbers. "See, this tells you how many taps for each letter. It says here that it was invented more than a hundred years ago, in the time of Czar Nicholas I. I've been practising at night—"

"I know you have," Phyllis says, and now she is laughing with relief, a little wildly, making him look worried all over again. "I'm not laughing at you, Mr Molesley, I promise. I'm laughing at myself. I heard your tapping through the wall, last night and the night before, and I thought—I don't know what I thought. It was silly."

"But how could you have heard? Your room's nowhere near mine."

"I've no idea," Phyllis says. She realises there are tears in her eyes and dabs at them with the edge of the handkerchief, unable to believe how quickly everything has reversed. "Something about the walls or the pipes, I suppose, making the sound carry, like that gallery in St Paul's where you can hear someone whispering at the other side. Oh, Mr Molesley, you can't imagine how glad I am to find out it was only you."

"Well, I'm very sorry to have frightened you," Mr Molesley says. He closes the book again and pushes it away, as if it's the very embodiment of his wrongdoing. "Truly. I would never want to do that, Miss Baxter."

His face is so earnest and well-meaning that Phyllis has to look away, knowing she doesn't deserve such concern from him, or from anyone. She knots her hands together on her black skirt and stares down at them, and Mr Molesley fidgets.

"I won't do any more practising now that I know it bothers you. I mean, it's not as if I'm going to leave service and become a spy." He lets out a short, nervous laugh. "Can you imagine it? Me? I'd be caught the first time I spied on someone."

"You're not cut out to deceive," Phyllis says. "That's a good thing, Mr Molesley." All at once she feels exhausted again, bone-weary with her broken sleep and the sudden release of tension, and she stands up, closes her workbox and gathers Lady Grantham's blouse over one arm, being careful to keep her pricked finger away from it. "I think I'll go up now. I can finish this in the morning."

"Must you? I was thinking we could have a cup of tea first." Mr Molesley looks up at her with a hopeful expression.

"It's kind of you, but no, thank you. I want to sleep well, and tonight I think I will. I'll see you at breakfast, Mr Molesley."

"Until then, Miss Baxter."

She's already at the door when he calls after her.

"I truly am sorry, Miss Baxter. I hope you'll forgive me."

Phyllis turns around and smiles at him gently, thinking how odd and how endearing he is, with his mixture of clumsiness and self-deprecation and eagerness to do the right thing. She cannot believe he has ever committed a sin that truly needs forgiving in his life.

"I already have, Mr Molesley."


End file.
